Looking Back, Moving Forward
by OakStone730
Summary: Twenty-five years years after the Ares 3 mission lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, the surviving crew members gather to reflect and remember. For Chris Beck the memories of what happened on Mars are forever tied to his heart. WARNINGS: Major Character Death, Alternate Ending PAIRINGS: Beck/Watney and Beck/OC (no infidelity)


**April 28, 2037**

Annie Montrose walked to the podium. "Good morning, I have a brief statement to read and will not be taking any questions at this time."

She stared down at the single sheet of paper, and then looked up into the lenses of the world's press gathered in the press room.

"Since late last year Mark Watney has been making steady progress towards the Ares 4 mission site at Schiaparelli, completing nearly two-thirds of the 2,000 mile journey. Several weeks ago, NASA began monitoring a low-residue dust storm forming in his path. Although NASA was aware of the storm there was no way to alert Watney. Because of the unique slow forming nature of this type of dust storm, Watney would have had no way of knowing the danger that was ahead of him.

"On Sol 468, which was March 15, Houston time, Watney entered the storm on the Arabia Terra.

"On Sol 475, Watney wrote a message in rocks that was captured by satellite imagery that he was aware of the storm. Soon after the dust cloud obscured all satellite coverage of this area of the planet surface. We can only assume Mark Watney attempted to maneuver out and around the storm.

"NASA satellite engineers continued to monitor the edges of the storm in hopes of locating Watney and the rover.

"By April 20, the storm had dissipated enough that satellite imaging was possible. For five days all areas of the Arabia Terra were searched in minute detail. On April 25, the rover and its trailer were located overturned at the bottom of the Marth Crater. This location has been carefully monitored for the past three days.

"No footprints have appeared around the vehicle, the solar panels necessary to power vital rover equipment and batteries have not been deployed. The sand surrounding the rover has not been shifted by any mechanical or human means. In short, there is no indication of any kind that Mark Watney survived the incident that overturned the rover.

"It is the considered opinion of the NASA experts and scientists that Mark Watney died sometime between March 20 and early April.

"NASA Director of Operations Theodore Sanders personally delivered the news to the Watney family yesterday. The surviving members of Ares 3 have also been informed. Their mission continues, and the Hermes spacecraft will pass by Mars and return to Earth on February 19, 2037.

"We will be releasing an obituary and full press packet on Mark Watney later today. Thank you."

 **June 28, 2060**

Chris's phone buzzed just as he was pulling onto the dirt road that led to the Chaco Canyon National Park. Recognizing Sam's ringtone was the only reason he answered, since Beth was sound asleep in the passenger seat. It had been a long trip up from Houston.

"Hey, Sam," he answered just loud enough for his wireless earpiece to pick up.

"Still driving, then?" Sam's low growl usually didn't fail to make Chris's heart skip a beat, metaphorically, but today he just settled back in the driver's seat a little more. He hated himself for feeling conflicted. He loved Sam, but already his thoughts today weren't about about him.

"Yeah, we left Roswell just after breakfast, and then hit a traffic jam. Nearly there now."

"How are you doing?"

"As well as can be expected," Chris said neutrally.

"Okay, I understand. I just wanted to make sure you were alright, there was something on the radio about an accident on I-40."

"It wasn't us. I think that is why traffic got snarled up, but the accident was cleared by the time we got there."

"I won't call again, but do call me if you need anything."

"I will. Enjoy binge watching all those shows you've saved up," Chris said quietly as he saw Beth move and stretch.

"Don't you know it." Sam hung up without signing off. Chris sighed and slipped the earpiece off and threw it on the car's dashboard.

Beth rubbed her eyes as she sat up and looked around. The semi-arid desert seemed desolate, the wash of the ancient seabed was parched and cracked. The scrub brush and sage provided the only green in the gray sandstone landscape. "Where are we?"

"Almost there. Martinez texted a while ago, he picked Vogel up at the Albuquerque airport."

Beth gave a laugh. "Look!" she said, rolling down the windows and letting in a blast of dry heat as she waved at a group of three children waving at the van from atop a mesa, their dirt bikes beside them.

"They probably saw our dust trail from ten miles out, waving at strangers driving by is a way to break up their day." Chris commented as she rolled up the window again. "I haven't heard from Lewis, did she message you?"

Beth hummed as she pulled out her phone. "Mmmhmmm, she was having lunch in Santa Fe an hour and a half ago."

"She'll probably get here about the same time as the other two." Chris said as he gave a quick jerk of the wheel to avoid a large pothole. "We'll check in, get the tent set up."

"Sure." Beth nodded. "You doing okay?"

"Yeah." He gave her a quick smile, glad for the need to sunglasses as she turned her head to study him.

"Chris." The glare she was giving Chris was better than a pitying one, but he wasn't going to give in. Not today. She finally sighed and went back to looking out the window. This anniversary was a tough on all the surviving members of the Ares 3 mission, but Beth understood all too well how it was tougher for Chris.

The passage of time removes the sharp pain of grief but it never truly goes away. Time simply allows the scars to slowly become covered and less acute. Of course, for Chris, he hadn't had the luxury to grieve, to show his pain. Only Sam, Beth, and Mark's parents knew what he'd gone through during the Ares 3 mission.

Chris pulled up to the check-in kiosk for the campground and held up his identification card to the monitor. It spit out the reservation receipt for the group campsite.

The first five-year reunion of the Ares 3 lift-off had been in 2040 at the Kennedy Space Center. Lewis had put across the request, the order, to come together at the center to remember Mark. It had been just two and a half years after their return, and the failure of their mission-missions-was still raw. The tense journey back to Earth; long painful months spent contemplating Mark's empty seat.

Going to that first reunion had been the last thing Chris had wanted to do, but Beth had dragged him there and somehow it had helped. They had gathered in the shadow of the very launchpad where their mission had begun. And in the dark of the Florida night and a bottle of Mark's whiskey they'd come together. United. And slowly the healing finally began.

Ten years ago, when the Kennedy Space Center and all of Cape Canaveral had been lost to the rising seas, Martinez had suggested moving their reunion to Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. The arid desert was vaguely reminiscent of Mars, and Chaco's remoteness and designated Dark Sky status meant they could see the stars maybe not as brilliantly as in deep space, but as close as one could get with feet still rooted on Earth's surface.

Lewis arrived just as they were finishing setting up their tent. She pulled up in her vintage baby blue Volkswagen camping van that had enough miles on it to have traveled to the Moon and half the way back.

"I passed Martinez and Vogel at the outpost in Nageezi. They were stocking up on ice."

"And beer, I'm sure." Beth said with a knowing grin. "And that sounds like a great idea." She pulled three bottles out of the cooler, and they were nearly through them when Martinez's half-ton pickup appeared, pulling his fifth wheel camper. After two and a half years in a crowded spacecraft, Martinez liked to be comfortable.

It didn't take long to get everyone set up. Martinez rolled out the canopy on his camper for shade. The stack of six folding chairs was in the back, and Lewis brushed off the offer to help as she pulled them out and put them in a ring on the eastern side of the camp.

There was plenty of time left in the afternoon, so Beth headed out for a hike with Lewis and Vogel to see the cliff dwellings near the campground. Martinez said he would stay behind to get supper started. Martinez gave a wink when Chris offered to help and motioned him inside the camper.

"Beer? Nothing we need to do for supper, Marissa made everything and it's all ready to go in the fridge. All we have to do is grill the steaks when it's time to eat."

The camper's generator was running the air conditioning, and it was almost too cold as they stepped inside. Martinez settled back into one of the captain's chairs as Chris sat on the sofa. The beer was from a Colorado microbrewery and smooth going down.

"You doing alright?" Martinez asked, idly spinning a pack of cards that was on the table next to him.

"Sure, yeah. You know…" Chris gave a shrug. "Must've had a hundred calls from journalists. Everyone wanting to make a big deal about how it's been twenty-five years."

"Same." Martinez nodded. "But, I meant, how are _you_ doing. This has to be hard."

"It is hard for all of us-"

"Look. It's okay." Martinez leaned forward as he interrupted. "I knew. Halfway through training I knew about you two."

"What?" Chris nearly dropped his beer. "What are you talking about?"

"You and Mark," Martinez said. Chris stared at Martinez in shock. He opened his mouth to deny, but the words couldn't, didn't come out, and Martinez kept on talking. "I never said anything. After Mark...you were going through hell, and back then I thought it would be worse if you knew that I knew."

"You…" Chris shook his head, trying to make sense of what Martinez was saying but couldn't. Stalling, he raised the beer bottle to take a swig, but it was empty.

Martinez turned in his chair and got two more beers out of the fridge without even standing. He cracked one open and handed it over to Chris and sat back.

Chris rolled the bottle between his palms as he tried to figure out what to say. "How did you know?" There was no point in denying. He couldn't deny it anymore.

"One night I swung by Mark's townhouse to see if he wanted to go bowling. The windows were open and...well, Jesus, man, hope for the neighbors' sake the walls had good sound-proofing."

Chris couldn't hold back a gut laugh, but it ended in a half-sob. "I…" he couldn't get past the idea that Martinez had known the whole time and hadn't said a thing.

"It's okay. You guys. You never gave it away. You were one-hundred percent professional. If I hadn't been looking for it, I wouldn't have known you were still a thing when we were heading to Mars."

"Yeah, well." Chris took a long hard drink from his beer. "We had both always dreamed of going to Mars. When we met in training…we didn't expect to...it just happened."

"And you didn't want to give up your shot at Mars."

Chris nodded. "We figured we would keep it under wraps until after the mission was over. Neither of us wanted to get pulled. Chance of the lifetime to go to Mars with the lov-" He broke off, and cursed as tears filled his eyes.

"With the love of your life?"

Chris nodded. "First love…what Mark and I had was special. And being able to do the mission with him. It was like we'd won the lottery. And then it all fell apart. Losing him twice...I could hardly function on the way back to Earth. The first was bad enough, that second time…"

"I know. I was worried about you. Was afraid that you would…" This time it was Martinez's eyes that teared up. "I made sure that you weren't alone too long."

"What?" Chris stared at him in disbelief. "You mean…"

"Hell, yeah. All those games of chess and challenging you to work out with me?" Martinez grinned. "Only thing I hate worse than working out is fucking chess."

"Martinez…I…"

Words failed Chris as he sat back on the sofa. He tried not to remember how dark his thoughts had gotten on that final return journey to Earth. He'd never felt so alone, and it had only been the forced NASA regimen that had been hammered into them again and again during training that had kept him moving. Beth had figured it out when she had come to see him in his lab and he'd been a mess because Mark's birthday was the next day. She'd been there for him to talk to, but when ever he had downtime and she was on duty , Martinez had been a constant thorn in his side. Always pestering him.

"Yeah, well." Martinez leaned back in his chair. "I wasn't going to lose a second member of our team. Let's get the grill going. I picked up some porterhouse steaks that are so beautiful that they will make you weep."

By the time the other three returned from their hike, supper was ready. Conversation around the crowded table in the RV focused on catching up on the past five years. They were all retired now, although Chris still was brought in by the International Space Union to consult on deep space medicine.

After the meal, the dishes were quickly done. Now, they simply waited for sunset. They sat in the ring of chairs and waited as the sun sank lower in the sky, slowly changing the gray sandstone to pinks and oranges.

By lucky chance, it was a new moon. The faint crescent was rising on the horizon, and Mars would be visible soon after. The stars would be brilliant in the near-total darkness of the canyon, but as the others talked, Chris's mind was forced back to the Hermes as they began their transit around Mars. They should have been prepping for the nerve-wrenching task of getting Mark back aboard, instead all they could do is watch from hundreds of miles above the surface as they slowly passed by his final resting place.

Chris would never forget the pain of that moment, looking down as they passed over the Marth Crater knowing that somewhere down there Mark's body was covered in sand. Lost forever.

And there had been the niggling horror of not knowing what had happened. Houston estimated his death in the matter of weeks, not even days, or hours. They hadn't estimated how or when he'd died. The first time, when Mark had been snatched from them by the voracious winds and debris, Chris had been comforted that Mark likely hadn't had time to feel anything. Only to learn, _months_ later, that Mark had felt it, that he'd treated his own deep abdomen wound, _and_ stitched himself up using Chris's abandoned equipment.

How long had Mark survived in the dust storm after the rover had rolled over? A day? Three? Had Mark been trapped underneath the equipment? Had he bled out? Had his suit breached? Had he tried to walk out and been covered in the sands of the storm? These were questions that Chris had pondered endlessly aboard the Hermes. The answers would never be known, and for his own sanity, he'd had to let them go. He'd had to let Mark go.

"Chris."

He felt Beth's hand squeezing his arm and looked around. It was completely dark, and the bottle of whiskey was already set out. It was the final bottle from the case of six that Mark had bought twenty-five years ago, the ones that Mark's parents had given Chris when he'd come to see them after he'd returned to Earth. Next to the bottle sat a humble stack of six Dixie paper cups in honor of the paper cups that Mark had handed out for them to toast their mission the night before their launch.

Lewis stood, her red hair had begun to turn to a silvery-white on that long journey home aboard the Hermes. She picked up the bottle of whisky and cracked the seal on it. Martinez pulled one of the small paper cups from the stack and handed it to her. She filled the cups, passing each one until they all had one. Her hand only shook as she filled the last and set the bottle down.

She handed the last cup to Chris. His hand trembled too as he put it on the arm of the empty chair to the right of him. Beth gave a broken cry, and he reached out to grip her hand tightly. With his free hand he held his cup and waited.

Lewis lifted her cup to the faint orange glow of Mars rising three degrees below the crescent moon. "To the damn bastard, who twenty-five years ago tonight, snuck us all out of our bunks at Cape Canaveral on the very eve of our our mission so that we could have one last shot before going to Mars."

"To Mark," the rest of them chorused, and in unison they drank that first shot, throwing it back in honor of Mark.

Martinez poured the next round. He raised his glass. "Mark, I want you to know that Little Mark is getting married this Christmas. Salud."

Vogel stepped up and walked the circle, carefully filling each paper cup. "Mark, in our journey to Mars you taught me much in the time we spent together. I forever miss the talks we had aboard the Hermes, looking out into the space of time. To my old friend."

Beth's eyes were tear-filled but she didn't waver as she filled their glasses. "Mark, like many had done before, you called me a geek and a nerd. But when you said it, it was like it was a badge of honor. Tonight I thank you for allowing me to appreciate and value each day with the ones I love."

Chris poured the last round, when he was done he set the empty bottle on the ground and lifted his glass. "Mark, I spent last weekend with your mom in Chicago. She knew I was coming here and wished us to remember you well. To remember your irreverent humor. Your fearlessness. You were relentless on your mission to come back home. You were so brave, Mark." His voice cracked, but he went on, "And most of all, you were loved, and you will never be forgotten."

ooo

The street was quiet, dark except for the glow of streetlights. Chris gave a sigh of relief as he pulled into the garage, parking next to Sam's jeep. He'd dropped Beth off in San Antonio, where she and Frank had invited him to spend the night, but he wanted to get home, needed to get home.

He left everything in the car, there'd be time to unpack tomorrow. The garage door squeaked loudly as it closed, oiling it was one of the things on the to-do list that Sam and he never quite got around to doing.

Hanging the keys on the hook board in the kitchen, Chris walked straight through the house to the bedroom. The lights were all on, but Sam was sound asleep on the bed, his head nestled deep into the white linen of the pillowcase. His dark hair had more gray now than when they'd met fifteen years ago, but was just as thick and still with a bit of a curl when he let it get long. The summer-school homework papers he'd been grading were in a messy pile next to him. Chris slid the red pen out of Sam's closed hand and set it on the dresser along with the papers.

Turning off the lights he quietly got undressed and slipped under the covers, slipping his arms around Sam, and giving a reassuring squeeze as Sam gave a start and woke.

"Sorry, meant to stay up." Sam turned to face Chris and reached up and caressed Chris's face. "How is everyone?"

"Good. Vogel is going to be a grandfather. Lewis and Robert are thinking of moving to Hawaii now that he's retired."

"Nice. Let's be sure to get ourselves invites."

"Martinez leaped on that idea already. She told him that they were going to get a one-bedroom place with no room for out-of-town guests."

"I don't believe that," Sam said with a smile and Chris nodded in agreement.

"We hiked around the ruins the last couple days, took the long trail out to see the petroglyphs, pictures carved into the rock a thousand years ago and still there." He'd wandered off from the rest of the group to study the petroglyphs. Putting his hand out and touching the tangible evidence of where someone long departed had been had left Chris yearning for one last chance to be back on Mars, to see if Mark had scratched his own words or drawings on the Mars surface. To be able to touch them and remember.

Sam fingers stroked Chris's cheek, bringing him back to the present. "It sounds like it was a good reunion, but how are _you_ doing?"

"I'm okay, more or less." Chris closed his eyes, it had been a long trip home and far too much time to dwell on everything. "I just wish..."

"He's with you. Always. You know that." Sam whispered.

"I know. I know. It's...hard. Sometimes I think it would be easier if we didn't do this - get together - but then I feel guilty."

"I think it's important that you do all get together. Even if it hurts. I love you, all of you, your past and present."

"I love you, too." Chris murmured back.


End file.
